hey what's this why yes it is Linux running on my new Snapdragon ex Elite powered laptop called the Asus Vivo book and yes it's Arch by the way so is this real why yes it is I can log in as root and there I am now notice I'm using this old keyboard that's plugged in through USB and you might be wondering why I'll get to that in a moment but yeah I'm on the Linux shell you might also notice that this is not the guey interface you might notice a lot of things like that when bringing up a Linux machine for a brand new system like this is see the Snapdragon X Elite series of machines are pretty new and I recently got to find out what it takes to put Linux on these things don't worry it's easy to install Okay Okay that was that was a complete lie and I admit to it I did try a few things I tried the most popular dist dra out there probably Ubuntu the arm version of that the server ARM version of that and nothing works and I tried it on this Asus VI book with the ex Elite along with a bunch of other ex Elite machines none of them would boot Ubuntu so how did I get Arch Linux installed on this machine well from a technical standpoint anything is possible right it just requires time and effort and I put in almost 4 hours of my time punching in commands that somebody else was telling me to punch in yes I admit to it I am a Linux Noob I'm a user I'm a casual user of Ubuntu I've been a Windows user for 30 years and a Mac User for the last 12 or so and Arch Linux while it gives you a lot of control that's why people use it and like it you also need to have a lot of knowledge a lot of background knowledge to be able to install it and that's why people that are more technical in the Linux World prefer Arch Linux but it's also a lot more difficult to install as I found out so there's absolutely no way in hell that I could have installed this on this machine myself I reached out to a Linux kernel engineer and my me Lea almost 4 hours that I spent in it is nothing compared to the time that these folks have put in getting Linux up and running in general and also on specific machines as I found out that's what needs to happen here as well and that leads me to the reason why I'm using a keyboard like this why I don't have a fancy desktop just yet while Linux is only running on the Asus V book and not the Samsung Galaxy or the surface machines or the Dell machines it was a really eye openening experience getting to play around with the bits and pieces to try and get this run and the way Linux goes out to people the way you get it eventually on a little stick like this and you can just stick it in and boom 10 minutes later you have Linux running on your machine is a complicated long process there's the kernel of the Linux system and that's just what it sounds like the kernel engineer works on the core of the Linux system konel is responsible for managing system resources and the interaction between low-level hardware and software in the operating system now along with the kernel there's also a device tree that this is something that's going to be specific to each of these machines because each machine is going to have different components on it different ports different keyboards different screens touchpads and so on and a device tree describes the hardware that's attached to each individual machine to the operating system and a device tree is going to be different for each machine and has to be manually programmed for each machine and once a device tree is described it can be Upstream merged into the kernel upstreaming is the process of submitting these changes to the kernel to the official kernel so that the changes become part of the official code base now as far as the Snapdragon X Elite machines they've already had Linux working on it for a while but if you remember you might have seen some materials online some videos from Qualcomm with these red laptops they're the ones that they are dog fooding and using themselves and developing on and testing on well those have Linux working on it there's a company called linaro Lin for Linux r o for arm O is for I don't know it just sounds cool maybe so they've been developing Linux and integrating it on arm that's their whole purpose and they've been working with Qualcomm to get Linux on these new machines with the Snapdragon X Elites they've already done most of what needs to be done on those red machines the device tree is done on that but the red machines are not your Samsungs they're not your Asus Dell or Microsoft machines or HPS or lenovosupport separately targeting Linux on some specific machines might be further along than some other machines for example there's a GitHub repo R 64 laptops this will lead you to some repositories with instructions on how you can get Linux working on some machines this website right here that they're hosting on GitHub has linked machines like this ThinkPad x13 s and the dros that are available to get things going right now if you take a look at Arch Linux arm this specific machine you have information that people have kept track of this acpi dumped from Windows basically this is the dump that people need to start with to get information for a certain system so they can build a device tree based on that this is for this specific machine and then you have the breakdown of each little piece like audio power Bluetooth touchscreen GPU and so on under auntu it actually gives you instructions on how you can get this set up and they even give you a download image but this would be kind of useless for me to try on my machines cuz I don't have the Lenova one yet and since Asus ship their machines much sooner to everybody you're seeing a lot more progress done on that one for Linux here's a fonics article that just came out it looks like Asus via book S15 could be one of the first devices with decent Linux support their patches undergoing review for upstreaming I already explained what that all that is the Asus V book S15 device tree support so that much of the basic functionality is working under Linux but various features are known to be broken not necessarily broken they're just not built yet Linux konel developer Schilling wo has been working through the device tree support for this Snapdragon X laptop namely the Asus via book currently the laptop battery monitoring is not working display orientation USB type A ports are not working that's why I'm running this to a dock to USBC and obviously the keyboard is not working that's why I'm running it externally there is a mailing list with updates on what's happening on these machines if you care to follow this closely and this has some relevant links to pull request from people that are currently very close to this and working on this themselves and we're not talking about a Microsoft here that has a dedicated team that they pay and they funded to have Windows for arm working on these machines no it's not like that that's why we're seeing such slow progress but this progress can be improved in my opinion from what I've seen I'm going to venture just to guess here that Microsoft's Windows was the first priority to get working on these and Linux is a priority but it's like down here somewhere on the list and that's why I don't think that they're being funded enough but I also don't think it'll be an insurmountable task to fund these developers that are super passionate about this stuff the problem that I've seen is that these developers that are currently working on implementing this that need to test on physical machines don't have these machines that's why shillin wo was able to get this far with the Asus Vivo book because this person has one of these there are more computer models and different device trees to dissect and there are people working on this so time is another Factor yes but also having these in those people's hands is important that also explains why Linux works well on the red laptops but none of us can buy those so my plea is with Qualcomm please Qualcomm if you're serious about Linux send these Engineers some of these machines so they can get their hands on it and iterate faster on getting Linux out there I understand that Microsoft might not like this that's maybe what's holding you back but it's time to show people that you're serious about Linux and the devel Community now if you're interested in setting up a Windows development environment that includes Linux running in Windows under WSL watch this video next I did a whole tutorial it's a bit on the long side so be prepared for that get a coffee and I will see you in the next video [Applause] [Music]